


The Crocker Academy

by mint_curiosity



Category: Homestuck, The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Canon-Typical Violence, Ensemble Cast, F/F, F/M, Humanstuck, Past Child Abuse, Sibling Bonding, Time Travel, Umbrella Academy AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-03-05 12:24:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18828631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mint_curiosity/pseuds/mint_curiosity
Summary: On the twelfth hour of the thirteenth day of April, 1989, forty-three women around the world gave birth. This was unusual only in the fact that none of these women had been pregnant when the day first began.Lady Constance Crocker, bootylicious billionaire and intrepid entrepreneur, resolved to locate and adopt as many of the children as possible.She got eight of them.





	1. sons & daughters

**NUMBER 1: “JANE”**

Jane woke up the way she always did. She scrabbled for her alarm clock with clumsy fingers, groggy in the dim, artificial light of the moon base. Blinking away the fading bits of her dream, she waited patiently for feeling to tingle its way back into her limbs.

Once she could feel her feet, she levered herself off her hard cot and reached mechanically for her spacesuit. It had been a smooth powder blue when she first arrived up here, glossy with the promise of new adventure. Now, it was scuffed and faded in most places, patched around the elbows and hurtling rapidly towards a truly dismal dishwater gray. 

Jane shoved her arms into the sleeves, heaving a sigh, then immediately admonished herself mentally for allowing such a blatant display of ennui. She knew her mother had sent her up to the moon to do something important, and she shouldn’t be ungrateful. Still, it was growing difficult to stay chipper with only her plants for company.

“Good morning,” she cooed at the selection of hydroponic containers dangling above her counter. The plants, as always, were unresponsive. Despite their silence, she felt a ghost of her old grin grace her lips as she brushed her gloved hands over their shiny leaves in assessment. They were looking so healthy; it even seemed like the rose might bloom soon. That would bring some much-needed cheer back into her life.

Bolstered slightly by her interaction with the greenery, Jane ate a swift breakfast, sparing only a a few minutes to worry about the dwindling food supply. She had sent her mother a note in her last shipment of reports, but Lady Constance had yet to send up more supplies. After a moment’s hesitation, she slipped another one into yesterday’s record package. She’d launch the next package in a couple days, leaving more than enough time for Constance to restock her cupboard with more freeze-dried imitations of food. 

Jane missed cake.

Biting back another sigh, she stood and fastened on her helmet. Time to take a walk.

The moonscape was as dusty and crater-pocked as always. Jane still remembered when she still found it beautiful and foreign; she’d wanted nothing more than to bound around all day in the reduced gravity, intermittently leaning over the edge of canyons and marveling at their depth.

That had been years ago. Now, she moved on autopilot, leaping across the surface with her mind drifting idly. 

She reached her viewing station in record time. Earth spun on the horizon, clouds twisting across its distant surface. Jane watched it, jaw clenching slightly. For a second, she imagined she could see seven pinpoints of light whirling with the planet, her siblings going about their terrestrial lives.

She wondered if they missed her.

It was a silly thought, and she shook it away as her wrist transponder beeped with an incoming message. Her hopes rose, only to sink again when she recognized the code on the screen as Psii’s, not her mother’s. Suppressing her disappointment, she swiped to accept it.

Seconds later, she almost wished she hadn’t.

**NUMBER 2: “JOHN”**

John thought he was _killing_ this stand-up gig. For once, nobody was on their phone, nobody was chugging their wine, and, most of all, nobody was heckling.

Not that John couldn’t handle heckling. All the best comedians could handle heckling, and John definitely wanted to be one of those. Therefore, he could handle heckling. Unless it was that bitchy bartender from Spinneret’s. Mostly because she usually threw things too, and John’s hand-eye coordination had never been good. Not that that was a big flaw or anything. He was a perfectly functional human being, thank you very much.

“...and that’s why you should always _put the bunny back in the box_ ,” he finished jovially, beaming out at his audience. Polite applause and scattered laughter greeted him, and he set the microphone back into its stand with a firm hand.

He burst back into the green room with the grin still plastered to his face, hardly noticing Rufioh’s cry of dismay as his note cards scattered on the sudden breeze swirling around the room. The new set had gone over so _well_! He was tempted to go to the house and tell his father about it right away, but he tried to only go when Lady Constance was out of town, and she certainly wasn’t currently. 

In fact, her hovership had been resting recalcitrantly on the roof for going on two months now. John was getting so antsy to speak with James again that he was starting to consider sending his mother a fake invitation to speak at the United Nations or something. Unfortunately, the only person he knew who could successfully fool Constance’s mail screening system was indisposed.

Of course, that had been his doing as well. Getting his sister to try rehab again was not an easy task, but John had finally managed it for the first time in two years in March. He had her release date scribbled on his wall calendar in his shitty apartment. Just one more week, and maybe she could forge and send a faux humanitarian award. And probably start sleeping on his couch without paying rent again. Well, all good things came with a price.

John collected his bag from the corner of the room, humming some half-remembered song from the radio. He didn’t even have a shift at the diner tonight; he could go straight home.

He was imagining going to bed in the victory glow emanating from his rising comedic star when he caught sight of the news report playing silently on the television in front of the couch. Rufioh was staring at him apprehensively.

“Hey, man. Sorry,” his fellow comic muttered.

John suddenly had the feeling it was going to be a long few days.

**NUMBER 3: “JAKE”**

Jake really did adore red carpets. And he was quite good at them, if he did say so himself. 

He threw an easy grin at the flashing cameras, puffing out his chest in his tuxedo. The blasted thing was much too constricting, downright dangerously so if some scoundrel tried to jump him, but Aranea had insisted. She was still his manager, after all, even if their divorce was in the works. 

Out of habit, his thumb went to play with the gold band on his left ring finger and met nothing but a fading tan line.

“Smile, Jake,” Aranea said testily through his earpiece, and he glanced nervously at her familiar, curvy figure, silhouetted in shadows at the end of the red carpet.

Right. Smile.

He pulled his slipping lips back up and tossed a jaunty wink at a reporter in a tee-shirt that read ‘Fisticuffs Fanatic.’ They squealed, and his showmanship surged back in full force at the noise.

“Jake!” someone yelled. “Where will the next _World Wanderings_ season take place?”

“Jake, were you scared when you wrestled that crocodile in the finale?”

“Tell us about how you’re handling the divorce, Jake!”

Jake kept carefully silent, swapping his grin for a practiced smolder, and gave the cameras a nice spectacle as he reached the middle of the carpet by subtly tilting his plush rump toward the clamoring crowd as he posed. Aranea’s irritated huff crackled in his ear.

There was nothing like a life in the spotlight to prepare one for…well, more life in the spotlight. Jake had never been a standout in interviews as a kid, which had made it all the more difficult when the magazines suddenly decided he was teen heartthrob. Still, he’d always had a knack for public appearances. An inviting aura, his mother used to say after press conferences, and then turn to the others with disappointment pinching her face.

Jake never said anything wrong to reporters, unlike some of his more unruly siblings.

The din quieted slightly for a moment, flashbulbs slowing. A voice rang out over the hush.

“Jake! Who will you bring to the funeral?”

He froze, blinking, ass still popped out like his life depended on it. Funeral? Had one of Lady Constance’s frightening colleagues kicked the proverbial bucket at long last? Unfortunate, if that was the case.

“Jake, have you spoken with your siblings?”

In the corner of his eye, he saw Aranea start trotting towards him. Confused, he dropped his press face and turned toward her advancing form. She was unusually pale, impeccably styled curls framing her tense expression.

“Aranea?” he asked, voice low. His ex-wife seized his upper arm, nails digging in even through the fabric. 

In heels, she was the perfect height to lean in and hiss into his ear as she dragged him into the wings.

Oh drat. Unfortunate, indeed.

**NUMBER 4: “ROXY”**

Roxy was leaving rehab. Whether or not she was _supposed_ to be leaving rehab was another question, but it didn’t really matter. She’d only gone in as a favor to her dear, sweet, favorite brother anyway. He’d looked at her with his big blue eyes and asked her to as an early birthday gift. And then he’d paid for it with his sad little waiter salary, so she guessed the whole deal was also meant as _his_ early birthday present to _her_. To be honest, what passed for birthday celebrations in their family was kind of sucky.

“Kankles,” she chirped. “Today is thirty days.”

The center’s counselor-on-staff narrowed his dark eyes at her. “Ms. Crocker, as I have previously mentioned in our sessions, utilizing nicknames or other such overly-familiar forms of address can be off-putting for those who wish to maintain the structure of professional conduct in their interactions within a highly delicate power structure such as that belonging to this clinic. Furthermore, I know very well that you are merely twenty-two days into your treatment, as I have your papers directly in front of me. Not that I would accuse you of lying, as that would be offensive, but I do mean to suggest that you are perhaps confused. In fact…”

Roxy, balancing on the back two legs of her chair, tuned out Kankri’s diatribe in favor of admiring the motivational cat poster pinned to the wall behind his desk. It really was an adorable kitty, clinging to a tree branch with two fluffy black paws. The ironic charm of the overall poster was slightly offset by the large-print sign hanging next to it that read, ‘This office does not promote animal cruelty. No animals were harmed in the making of this poster. If you find it triggering to see an animal in such peril, please inform the counselor.’

“Hang in there, kitty,” Roxy said out loud, voice as earnest as possible.

Kankri sputtered to a halt, lips smacking open and closed without sound. “What?” he managed at long last.

“Hang in there, kitty,” Roxy repeated. “It sounds like you’re so stressed that you messed up my records. ‘S okay though, babe. We all make mistakes.” She winked and stuck a limber hand down her shirt.

Kankri flushed, looking away as she rummaged through her bralette. “Ms. Crocker,” he began huffily, but was interrupted.

“Got it!” Roxy said triumphantly, and she flipped a 30-day chip across the desk. It clattered onto the fake-wood surface as she continued. “’F I haven’t been in here for thirty days, how’d I get this?”

“Well, you obviously stole it,” Kankri snapped, snatching the chip off the desk and rubbing at its place of impact. Roxy let her mouth drop open in feigned hurt, and Kankri suddenly seemed to realize what he’d said.

“Are you implying all addicts are _thieves and rogues_?” Roxy asked delicately. Kankri was mumbling to himself, eyes wide with panic, fingers pressed against the chip. One of the words sounded suspiciously like ‘lawsuit.’ Roxy suppressed the smirk threatening to break her cover. Oh, she had him now.

“No,” Kankri finally wheezed.

“Good,” Roxy said pointedly, and she held out an expectant hand. “May I leave?”

Kankri nodded frantically, practically flinging the chip into her grasp. His hands immediately went to tug on his already-mussed hair.

Roxy almost felt bad.

Except she was also _really_ jonesing for a vodka cran.

The void was getting a little too insistent.

Twelve hours later, Roxy’s eyes fluttered open to meet the dim lights of Spinneret’s. She peeled her cheek off the sticky floor, gazing up at the woman seated in one of the tacky blue booths, the only other occupant.

“Oh great,” Vriska said flatly, continuing to plug numbers into her calculator as she added up the day's earnings. “You’re not dead. Get the fuck out of my bar, Crocker. You can’t sleep here just because you scammed your way out of Rainbow Falls Recovery Center or whatever the fuck again.”

“Aw, Vrissy,” Roxy cooed, admiring the way the room still spun around her. She loved it when going to sleep didn’t mean sleeping it off. It was like a fun surprise. “Aren’t ya s’pposed t’ call an ambulance when someone bites it on your bar’s floor?”

Vriska spared her a glare. “It’s bad business practice to let people see an ambulance come to your bar.”

Roxy didn’t bother to point out that it would be _worse_ business practice to let a patron die on your floor. “Mmm,” she hummed in assent, and leaned back against a stool. 

She wondered if Vriska would let her take a martini to go. Definitely not. At least she hadn’t called John; he certainly didn’t need to know that Roxy was wandering around town yet. He’d just worry and pretend he wasn’t worrying and give himself another ulcer. That kid really needed to stop internalizing all his shit.

Vriska’s voice pierced through the empty space again, and Roxy forced herself to focus back up. Maybe she _was_ offering that portable martini.

“…anyway,” Vriska was saying, “congrats on your heaping inheritance.”

Roxy was abruptly much too sober.

**NUMBER 6: “JADE”**

“Jade, I know you want to see your siblings for your birthday this year, but I still don’t think we have to arrive a whole week early,” Nepeta said plaintively.

Jade threw her girlfriend a grin over her shoulder and squatted down to scoop Bec’s latest deposit into a baggie. “Good boy,” she said softly to the dog, panting a few feet away from her. He barked in response, and she stood back up, tossing the baggie into trashcan a few feet off the trail.

“Will you just consider camping in Skaia for a few more days?” Nepeta continued. She was doing her kitten eyes, hitting Jade with two pitiful pools of mossy green.

“We’re already in New Alternia, silly!” It was true. The hustle and bustle of the city proper was audible just outside the thin treeline surrounding the trail. Jade reached down to pat the top of Bec’s fluffy white head. “Besides, Bec has to have time to get to know his aunts and uncles.”

“Yeah,” Nepeta acquiesced, fingers playing with the straps of her pack. “I just…you get all sad whenever we’re in a city. It makes _me_ sad.”

Jade hesitated, shoving her glasses up her nose. “If you don’t want to meet my siblings yet, you can just say so,” she said, watching Nepeta’s sharp teeth sink into her cute bottom lip. 

Jade had gotten so lucky with her, a significant other who actually wanted to spend all her time wandering through the wilderness, sleeping on the ground and bathing in streams. And taking care of a giant hellbeast of a dog. She felt a little stupid about the lump swelling in her throat, but she just wanted her amazing girlfriend to meet her…well, _mostly_ amazing siblings. Usually amazing. Amazing in fits and starts.

“No! I do! But when you talk about your mom, you go kinda…grimdark,” Nepeta said seriously, but then her eyes lit up. “Oh! Grim _bark_!” she squealed, bouncing over to Bec and giving him an ear scratch.

The lump in Jade’s throat dissolved. “Grimbark!” she echoed, swinging her hand out to catch Nepeta’s as it lifted from Bec’s head. She squeezed it gently, making earnest eye contact with her. “I promise I’ll be okay. I have you now! Constance can eat dicks.”

Nepeta’s uncertain face dissolved into giggles at the expression, and Jade found herself laughing as well. They set back off down the trail hand in hand, Bec trotting obediently alongside.

After a while, Jade led them off the path onto a side street, boots touching down on pavement for the first time in at least two months. The evening rush hour was coming to a close, but a fair amount of cars were still zipping through. The small stores lining the other side of the road were closing up for the night. The neon 'OPEN' sign on a pawn shop flickered out as soon as Jade laid eyes on it.

“Ugh,” Nepeta groaned, wrinkling her nose. “It smells _terrible_ here.”

Jade elbowed her playfully. “Hey, we couldn’t all grow up on a farm! This is my natural habitat.”

“No it isn’t.” Nepeta grinned, framing Jade with her fingers. “You look like someone cut you out of your natural habitat and pasted you in here.”

Looking down at her clothes and around at the buildings, Jade kind of had to agree. It was possible she was a little grubby. Still, Nepeta was one to talk. She was in the same boat. 

“Pot, meet kettle,” Jade teased.

Nepeta just beamed. “Okay, meanie. Let’s find a motel before it gets too dark. Oooh, can we ride the bus? I haven’t been on one since elementary school!”

Jade hummed pensively. “Not with Bec, I don’t think. Later! They’re kinda gross, though.”

“Aww." An exaggerated pout spread across Nepeta's face. “Alright.”

The motel they found was kind of a shithole, but it wasn’t like they were working with infinite funds. Besides, it allowed pets, and that was all they really needed. Not to mention there was a working shower, which Jade had to admit felt fucking _amazing_ , even if the water was a little bit brown.

When she emerged from the bathroom, steam rising off her skin, she found Nepeta curled on the bed and watching the television with her mouth hanging open. She jerked her head up at Jade’s arrival, eyes blown incredibly wide.

“Um,” Nepeta squeaked, and she pointed at the screen.

Jade dropped her towel.

**NUMBER 8: “ROSE”**

Rose lowered her violin, unsatisfied. She hoped desperately that the sound proofing on the practice room walls had blocked out the majority of that dismal runthrough, but she knew it definitely wasn’t thick enough. The mellow notes of Kanaya’s flawless cello practice session were ringing through the wall, slightly muffled but still quite audible. Rose winced.

Perhaps her fellow orchestra member had been too focused on her own piece to notice Rose fumbling every single one of her runs in the next room over. Probably not, though.

Rose placed her instrument back into its case, running her hands ruefully over the velvet interior. She felt ridiculously melancholy. She’d holed herself up in the room at five in the morning, hoping to make some progress. Instead, she’d been greeted with the sight of Kanaya’s hijab, the lovely jade green one, passing by the tiny window a mere ten minutes after she began.

The knowledge of who was practicing next door had thrown her irreversibly off her rhythm.

Still cursing her own traitorous mind, Rose emerged into the cold, gray light of the late morning. It smelled like rain.

The path home from the college music building was intimately familiar. She allowed herself to dally a bit, peering in shop windows. Today was her day off teaching lessons, and she was feeling in need of some new, odd knick-knacks with which to clutter up her apartment. She found her students to be most entertaining when they were nervously eyeing the stack of bronzed baby shoes she’d started piling up next to her dusty typewriter. Unfortunately, today did not seem to be the day for artifact collection. Nothing was catching her eye. 

She was examining one last storefront when the flickering screen of an antique television drew her attention, somehow rigged to play the local news channel.

Rose read the headline, mouth drying out at a remarkable speed. Her black-painted lips parted as she blinked, as dizzy as if she’d been clocked in the head.

“Mom?”


	2. we don't eat

Rose set her violin down on the parquet floor as soon as she walked in. If she wasn’t worried about the integrity of the instrument, she would have made a more honest attempt at scuffing the surface with the hard hinges of the case. As things stood, however, she figured her mother wasn’t around anymore to see the damage and get delightfully snippy, so the only thing it would have accomplished was create more work for her father. If there was anything James deserved, it certainly wasn’t more physical labor, so it all worked out in the end. The floor remained intact, and Rose’s violin rested peacefully against the dark-paneled wall.

The Academy was as cold and dim as she remembered. Constance had liked the dark; she claimed too much light gave her migraines. The last time Rose had been here was over five years ago, directly before her autobiography’s launch. She’d wanted to pointedly present an advance copy to Constance in person. Her mother, who always had her finger on the pulse of every market including literary, had known very well what Rose was planning and sent a tight-lipped Jane down to the foyer to claim she wasn’t home. 

Rose had responded by anonymously sending every single one of her advance copies to the house via individual parcels over the next few weeks, which was not a cheap task considering the heft of the books. She’d even deigned to fling one through a window pane late one night in a fit of rather obscene vitriol, which remained an embarrassingly aggressive-aggressive smudge on her otherwise impeccably passive-aggressive record with Constance.

Her thoughts were interrupted as someone clattered down the stairs, and Rose turned apprehensive eyes to the figure silhouetted in the gloom. 

Knife-sharp elbows, fly-away bottle blonde hair, and a crop-top glittery enough to make the CEO of Justice weep with envy.

Roxy.

“Rosie!” her sister squealed, bouncing across the room with her too-skinny arms open wide. She was on Rose in an instant, enveloping her in a bony hug. Rose squeezed her eyes shut against the onslaught of sequins pressing into her face and tried not to get black lipstick on her sister’s shirt.

“Hello, Roxy,” Rose managed upon extricating herself. Her eyes caught on a smear of black on Roxy’s shoulder. Fuck.

“I’m so glad you’re here! I win the bet!” Her words were a bit blurry around the edges, and Rose could smell the alcohol rolling off her in waves. Some things never changed.

Rose arched an eyebrow. “A bet? With whom, exactly?” 

Roxy’s pink eyes darted oddly to the left as she hesitated. “Uh,” she got out, hooking her thumbs into the waistband of her black leggings. “Jake?”

It was an obvious lie, but Rose decided to let it slide. If Roxy wanted to cover for either John or Jane’s lingering distrust of Rose, that was Roxy’s business. Rose could address it later.

“Well,” Rose said drily. “Please tell Jake to pay you an absurdly large lump sum of his Hollywood money, in that case.”

“Oh, f’r sure,” Roxy said distractedly. She kept making weird faces at thin air. Rose was starting to wonder exactly how high Roxy’s blood alcohol level was when her sister abruptly snapped out of it and said, “Drinks? There’s a whole lotta vodka with li’l gold flecks floatin’ around in it.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

With a gracious smile, Rose allowed Roxy to tow her to the parlor bar. She was probably going to need some chemical assistance to make it through the day anyway. Might as well mix a drink and skip a pill or two.

-

There was something amiss.

Jane prowled around her mother’s bed, eyeing the wadded tyrian purple comforter and wrinkled sheets. It wasn’t like Constance to spend enough time in bed to dent the mattress. In fact, before now, if Jane had had to wager on how the old lady would die, she would have bet ‘in battle,’ despite the fact that she’d never actually seen her physically fight anyone. Somehow, Constance would have gone down kicking.

This was the opposite of kicking.

Jane didn’t trust it.

She was in the process of examining the window locks when footsteps in the hall alerted her to someone’s approach.

John was standing in the doorway, hair mussed. He’d grown a somewhat impressive beard in her absence, but his dark blue tee-shirt was incredibly wrinkly. Jane didn’t think he’d ever even _touched_ the iron she’d given him when he moved out.

“Jane, I already checked everything out,” he said, almost regretfully.

Jane sniffed. “Do you even remember how to investigate a crime scene?” she asked pointedly, peering into the closet. Lady Constance’s formidable collection of skin-tight pantsuits hung innocently in the darkness. Jane shoved them aside to get a look at the back of the closet. A smooth expanse of wall greeted her prying eyes. She whirled on her brother. “Where’s Mother’s trident? It’s not in here.”

John blanched, hair ruffling with an impossible breeze. Jane glared disapprovingly as he mumbled, “I didn’t notice it was missing.”

“God, John,” she sighed, advancing toward him. His hair was fluttering wildly now, and she fought not to roll her eyes. He still had no darn self-control. “Give me the autopsy report.”

“What? They said it was a stroke!” John said defensively, taking a step back.

Jane planted her hands on her hips. “Then they missed something,” she snapped. “Mother would not have just _died_ like that! Dad has first aid protocol.”

“Maybe he was too late?” John offered weakly.

“Then where’s her trident?” Jane felt a surge of satisfaction when John came up short in his attempt to respond, instead silently worrying his bottom lip with his front teeth.

Finally, he wilted in defeat. “The report’s in Mom’s desk. I filed it.”

“You filed our mother’s autopsy report in her own office?”

“Well, I made a new file for it! Was I supposed to take it home and frame it?” John actually had the nerve to sound irritated.

“Are there photos of Mother filleted like a fish resting beside her tax returns?” Jane’s voice was rising into an embarrassingly shrill range, but she could not be bothered to police her tone. What had he been _thinking_?

“First of all, Mom definitely never paid taxes, and second of all, the short answer is yeah, kinda, but – Jane, wait!”

John yelped as she shoved past him to speed walk down the hall. This situation needed to be rectified. Immediately.

-

Jake paused in the entrance to his mother’s office, one hand resting on the doorframe. Truthfully, he did not have fond memories of this room. He still remembered waking up from a youthful nightmare and, after finding his father charging and Psii nowhere to be found, tumbling into Constance’s study in a rather humiliating fit of tears.

Constance had looked up from a pile of business contracts, waved a dismissive hand at him, and snapped, “Are you blind, buoy? I’m busy. Your li’l bitch-baby shit ain’t my problem. Get it the fuck together.”

And Jake had ended up in a miserable heap at the foot of Jane’s bed. Not for the last time, either.

Shaking his head, Jake took a deliberate step into the room. Nothing happened. After a couple moments, he relaxed. No Constance jumping out of the shadows to smack him upside the face. Granted, that would have been fairly extraordinary considering the circumstances, but Jake had long ago cottoned onto the fact that with his mother, nothing was impossible.

The desk rattled.

Jake made an unfortunate, terrified noise in the back of his throat, freezing in place. The desk warbled, “Owwww.”

Oh.

By the time he made it to over to the other side of the room, Roxy was tottering upright, one hand pressed to her head. She was sporting an electric pink, feathery bathrobe over the ensemble she’d been wearing when he arrived. 

“Hey, Jake,” she said, somewhat dejectedly. “There’s no secret safe under Mom’s desk, ‘f that’s whatchyer here for.”

“Er, no, Rox, I’m not here to burgle,” Jake replied.

His sister swayed slightly, squinting at him. “Cool, cool, cool. You ‘n Rosie both then. She din’t wanna help me either.”

“Rose is here?” Jake wasn’t surprised, exactly. Rose liked to make _statements_. Unfortunately, her statements usually ended up mixing chaos into situations where chaos was positively not needed. 

“Mmhmm. Oh! ‘F she asks you about a bet, jus’ say you made a bet with me, mmkay?”

“Uh, right-o,” Jake said. This encounter was becoming complicated. 

“Thanks, babe. I owe ya one.” Roxy gave him a bracing pat on the back and leaned over to rummage through their mother’s pen jar. “D’you think this is real gold plating?” she asked, brandishing a gleaming writing instrument much too close to his face. 

“It’s certainly _not yours_ ,” a new voice said crisply from behind Jake.

The pen clattered to the floor as it slipped from Roxy’s fingers. “Oh shit, Janey,” she breathed, face a picture of almost comical shock.

Jake turned, feeling strangely guilty. He wasn’t even the one being caught stealing from their deceased matriarch. Jane just inspired that emotion in people, he supposed.

Then he saw what Roxy was so stunned about.

Jane was standing just inside the doorway, arms crossed firmly in front of her body. She was deathly pale, so much so that Jake could see the blue marbling of veins in her temples. A flamingly red headband ringed her forehead, and her black hair was cropped into a buzzcut, though it was slightly overgrown. A bulky red turtleneck completed the ensemble. Its sleeves ended in odd half-gloves, leaving only her white fingers visible.

She was a far sight from his memories of her. Soft blues, floppy hair, easy happiness. Now, it looked like she was going to _war_.

“Roxy. Jake,” Jane said coldly, striding over to the desk. “Have you seen our mother’s autopsy report? Tried to steal it, by any chance?”

“Oh, I wasn’t -” Jake started, but Roxy cut him off.

“Puh-lease, like that bitch’s sliced-open bod would get me any cash. Every pic of her is as haunted as those houses divorced white dads w’th kids move into in horror movies. Din’t you do one’ve those, Jakey?” Roxy scooped a glass off the bookshelf and took a generous gulp of something with odd bits floating around in it. “’Cept you weren’t th’ dad cuz you’re not white. You were th’ next-door neighbor who died first.”

Jake glanced furtively at Jane, whose face was flushing with fury. “Move,” Jane snapped at Roxy, and their sister wobbled out from behind the desk. Jake stepped aside for her as Jane started flipping through the bedazzled file cabinet.

“Dead fish eyes on ol’ Connie,” Roxy muttered, seemingly to herself, and tried to take another sip of her drink, only to find the glass empty. She sighed. “You crazy kids want anythin’ from th’ bar?”

“Maybe you should slow down? A little bit of the hard stuff is all well and good, but you don’t want to be pickled for Mother’s memorial,” Jake suggested tentatively.

“Oh, Jake,” Roxy said fondly, clapping him heartily on the shoulder, “hells yeah I do.” She turned to leave dramatically, feathered robe flowing in her wake.

As soon as Roxy sashayed out of the room, Jane fixed him with a flat stare. “Did she take anything?”

“Not that I saw.” He cleared his throat. “Er, why precisely are you looking for Mother’s autopsy in her desk?”

“Our brother,” Jane said dangerously, fingertips dipping into another drawer, “decided this was the place to put it. After not even bothering to check her bedroom thoroughly for clues.”

Jake winced. “How is John faring otherwise?” he asked, hoping beyond hope that the question would ease Jane out of her snit.

It did not.

“Ask him yourself.” Jane straightened abruptly, clutching a file. A moment after examining it in full, she hissed, “Oh my _god_.”

Jake craned his neck to look, and found it was labelled in a thick blue scrawl: ‘DEAD MOM, DO NOT EAT.’

Jane’s face was approaching the same color as her shirt. “He thinks this is a _joke_!”

“That’s from _Arrested Development_ ,” Jake offered, voice a little weak. 

“ _I know what it’s from_!” Jane squawked indignantly. As soon as the words left her lips, her eyes fluttered shut, one hand flying to her head. She sucked in a deep breath. “Shoot. Sorry.” Her eyes flicked open again.

Jake, more perplexed than anything, managed, “Right as rain, Jane.”

Though she didn’t answer with her part of their call and response, the familiar rhyme from a childhood of late nights together made something ease in her face. She sank into their mother’s chair, almost drooping. “Is Jade here yet?” she asked, massaging her temples.

“I don’t believe so,” Jake replied, still taken aback by Jane’s swift mood shift. “But Rose is around, somewhere.”

“Great,” Jane said. Her tone was more than a little sarcastic. “And where is Aranea?”

“California.” He watched Jane’s gaze dart to his empty left hand, and something turned over uncomfortably in his stomach. “That’s…that’s over.”

The flash of a smile on her face was so quick he almost missed it. Seconds later, he thought he must have imagined it, because Jane’s expression was picture-perfect commiseration.

“I’ve missed a lot on the moon, then,” she said.

“I’ll catch you up.”

This time, her grin was most definitely real.

-

Rose was hunting for her book. Roxy had scampered off to plunder some of their mother’s trinkets, which left Rose alone in the parlor with only the gaudily-framed oil painting of her brother mounted above the fireplace.

Unfortunately, Dave’s silent, perpetually thirteen-year-old countenance was doing nothing to assist Rose in locating even one of the autobiographical tomes that she just knew had to be present in the house. Not that she really thought he’d be much more of a help in person. Just because Dave could zip from place to place in the blink of an eye did _not_ mean that he was an efficient taskmaster.

By the fifth time Rose went over the bookshelves, she was pretty much convinced that Constance had either burned all her books in the fireplace or started using them as doorstoppers around the house. Her third glass of wine was dwindling rapidly, and she kept hearing the frustratingly indecipherable voices of her siblings echoing through the halls. She had yet to see anyone excepting Roxy, but her sister had informed her that they were only waiting on Jade to show up. Jane had been scheduled to emerge from her post-moon quarantine a few hours ago, so presumably she was lurking about the house somewhere, Roxy had not yet run into her.

Rose had just about made up her mind to go start checking the rest of the Academy when Psii’s creaky voice made her stop halfway out of the room.

“Are you looking for something, Miss Rose?” His tone was light, familiar lisp curling around his words.

A smile spread across Rose’s lips as she turned, catching sight of her tutor for the first time in years. Psii was even more wizened, something she wouldn’t have thought possible as a child. He’d always seemed like the oldest man in the world to her, gray skin pocked with wrinkles and scars as he led them through their school lessons. She’d been seven before she figured out he wasn’t a man at all, but something altogether different.

Psii called himself a _troll_ , but neither he nor Constance would ever elaborate on exactly what that meant or where he was from. He was impossibly tall, breaking seven feet despite the hunch in his ancient spine. High cheekbones set off his unsettlingly deep-set eyes, one shining solid red, the other solid blue with no differentiation between pupil, iris, and white. Four sharp, candy-corn horns peeked through the top of his shock of wiry black hair.

He was her mother’s most trusted servant. Rose loved him anyway.

“My book, if it’s not too much trouble,” she said.

Psii smiled fondly down at her, too-sharp, scraggly teeth poking over his wrinkled lips. “Right. Your autobiography. Would you like the one you broke a window with? I thought the additions were nice.”

Rose took a demure sip of wine. “Wasn’t that the one that I filled with clippings from the newspaper smear campaign on her from ’97?”

“You did some great blackout poems with them,” Psii confirmed wryly. He reached one long arm into the back of one shelf, fiddling with something.

“Mmm. Did she ever even open one?”

A click sounded from the wall before he could answer, and he leaned even further into the bookcase. Rose peered into the secret compartment that had swung open. Twelve identical copies of her autobiography were stacked inside. Apparently, her mother hadn’t wanted to give her the satisfaction of seeing them on her bookshelf.

Psii pulled one out with his gnarled fingers, drawing the compartment shut again. He handed it to her, face apologetic. “I don’t think she ever read it. Your mother never was one for books.”

“In all honesty, I never read it either,” Rose said. Psii chuckled.

It was true; she’d written it, sent it off, and refused to make any edits. Somehow, a publishing house had still agreed to work with her. It was simply too much potential for profit to pass up.

_Complacency of the Learned: My Life as Number 8_ was not a good book. Rose had made it intentionally confusing, switching between English, French, and Latin mid-sentence, referring to her siblings as their numbers, their names, and their codenames at complete random, and including a wildly unnecessary glossary of terms that defined every English word in the book incorrectly and none of the French or Latin at all. 

The page numbers were backwards. Her agent despised her. It was a bestseller. 

Fingers curling around the absurdly thick tome, Rose gazed down at her own face. She was thirteen in the photo on the cover, hair still dark and falling below her shoulders. It was one of the last Dave had taken before he vanished; she had discovered it when she developed the film left in his camera.

“How long has it been since Dave disappeared?” she asked, turning to examine her brother’s sedate visage. The painter hadn’t quite managed to capture the vivid red of his eyes, and they had always looked strangely flat to her.

Psii hummed in consideration, a noise slightly too guttural to be human. “Sixteen years and some, if I’m not mistaken. I’m afraid my head for numbers isn’t what it used to be.”

The unmistakable creak of the front door opening made Rose’s response die in her throat. She met Psii’s eyes, confused, as two female voices and an odd clicking noise sounded from the foyer.

“Honey, I’m ho-ome!”

Apparently, the last of their errant brood had found her way back to the nest. And it sounded like she’d brought company.

-

Jade was struggling a bit to hold onto Bec’s leash. In retrospect, yelling into the echo-y foyer hadn’t exactly been conducive to dog calmness, but she couldn’t resist! Besides, it made Nepeta laugh, and that was always nice.

The first of her siblings to answer the call was Roxy, who came skidding into the room from the kitchen, beaming. “Jade!” She raised both befeathered arms above her head, looking back and forth between the hyperactive dog and the giggling girlfriend. “An’ who’s this?”

“This is Bec!” Jade replied, giving his broad, white back a pat.

“ _Jade_ ,” Roxy said, waggling her eyebrows, “I meant th’ total babe in black spandex.”

Nepeta flushed. “It was the only black I had in my pack,” she explained sheepishly. 

Roxy winked and performed a theatrical twirl, hot pink robe spinning out around her. “No worries. _This_ li’l number is from Mommy’s lingerie collection.”

Snorting, Jade looped her free arm around Nepeta’s shoulders. “Nepeta, this is my sister Roxy. Roxy, this is my girlfriend Nepeta!”

Nepeta waved. “You’re…The Void, right?”

“Shh,” Roxy shooshed, one finger pressed to her glossy lips. “I’m off duty.”

“Yes, for going on eleven years now,” someone said drily from the entrance to the parlor. Rose looked just like Jade remembered, bleach-blonde hair clipped into a neat bob, lavender shawl wrapped around her shoulders. “Welcome, Nepeta,” she said, inclining her head slightly.

“Ooh! I know you too!” Nepeta clapped her hands together happily. “Rose!”

Rose’s dark lips twisted into a wry smile. “Two for two. Keep it up and Jane might even let you stay.”

“Nah, th’ more she knows about us, th’ more likely it is that Janey gives her the boot. ‘Member how she was at Jake’s wedding?” Roxy countered.

“My what?” Jake trotted in from some unknown corner, looking as fit as ever. “Oh! Jade! And…someone.”

“Nepeta,” Nepeta said, distinctly stiffening up a bit. Jade squeezed her shoulder. The speed at which her siblings were converging upon them was obviously getting a little uncomfortable for her, despite her initial enthusiasm.

The very instant that she noticed Nepeta tense up was of course the moment Jane chose to emerge behind Jake, scowling. “Jade, you can’t just bring people in here.”

“First of all, Bec’s not people,” Jade retorted. “Second of all, this is my girlfriend, Nepeta, and she’s _thrilled to meet you too_.”

At this point, Nepeta was looking very much not thrilled. “Hi.” 

Bec offered a friendly bark, which Jane did not seem to appreciate. “We’re having a memorial for Mother, not a meet-and-greet,” she said. 

John’s voice echoed down the staircase. “Are you meeting and greeting without me?” 

“ _No_ ,” Jane snapped back pointedly, planting her hands on her hips. 

“You _are_ ,” he cried, tone all accusation as he bolted down the stairs. “Oh, Jade! And a dog and another lady.”

Jade frowned a little. John never used the stairs, he usually just floated down. Maybe she could talk to him about it later. 

“This is my girlfriend Nepeta,” she repeated for what felt like the thousandth time. God, she wished she’d just waited until everyone was in the room already. 

“Who needs to leave,” Jane said flatly.

“She’s not leaving!” Jade glared across the room at her sister, who was still half in the shadows. Jane looked odd, way too pale and wearing a shade of crazy-bright red.

Nepeta rubbed Jade’s back soothingly and stood on tip-toes to whisper in her ear. “It’s okay. I need to Skype with Equius today anyway,” she murmured. “Also, this is kind of…a lot.”

“Yeah,” Jade murmured back. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright! You warned me. I’ll take Bec.”

“Okay,” Jade said, glancing at her siblings, who were standing in silent observation. “See you tonight?”

“Paw-sitively!” Nepeta pressed a light kiss to the shell of her ear and took Bec’s leash.

As soon as the door closed behind Nepeta and the dog, Roxy let out the world’s loudest wolf whistle. “Geez. At least one’ve us is lucky in love.”

“Hey,” John objected. “I had a girlfriend last year.”

“And do you still have this supposed girlfriend?” Jake asked.

“That’s _so_ not the point, dude,” John said, then raised his eyebrows mischievously. “Do you still have a wife?”

“Oh my god, shut UP!” Jane’s voice was so harsh that Jade flinched. Even Rose shrank back into the parlor a bit, though her face stayed carefully composed. “Can we please go speak like adults about the service?” 

Jade met John’s wide eyes across the foyer. He shrugged.

“Let’s do this!” Roxy bellowed, breaking the uncertain silence, and marched into the parlor with an air of authority not usually carried by someone sporting a sheer, feathery robe.

Jade, at a loss, followed suit.

-

Jane took a moment to survey her siblings, strewn across the furniture and all together for the first time in years. Well, maybe not _all_ together. Even though Dave’s portrait hung unsmiling above the fireplace, Dirk’s statue was out in the courtyard. And paintings and statues probably didn’t count as siblings anyway.

She shook off that thought, returning her gaze from the window to the assembly before her. John and Jake were sitting in the wingbacks, John sipping resolutely at some brandy and Jake toying with one of their mother’s lizard skulls. Every time John took another taste of the brandy, he pulled a face of pure disgust, then immediately tried to pretend he hadn’t. 

Jade was on the couch, cheeks puffed out petulantly, filthy hiking boots propped up on the nice glass table. Jane bit back an admonishment; she had the feeling she’d already made an enemy of her sister for the day.

Rose sat primly next to Jade, as serene as if she wasn’t invading the very space she’d betrayed to the public. Roxy made three on the couch, hanging upside down absurdly over the back but blessedly without another drink.

Jane had to be delicate about this. She took a deep breath.

“I think we should have Mother’s ashes scattered at sea,” she said carefully. The gold urn, sitting on the mantle beneath Dave’s portrait, seemed to gleam approvingly.

“What?” Roxy exclaimed, and she slid down onto the couch proper, legs dangling over the arm. “Why?”

“Mother loved the ocean; she talked about it all the time,” Jane replied, a little offended. She hadn’t expected anyone to question her on the subject.

“Your experiences are not universal, Jane,” Rose said, the perfect picture of innocence. Jane managed not to glare at her by staring resolutely at the bar across the room.

John burst into a fit of brandy-induced coughing, and Jane set her jaw in annoyance as she turned to look at him. 

“Bluh,” John finally got out. “Um, Mom did talk about the ocean all the time, actually. In like, a weird way. But I don’t think we should waste our time going to the coast. Can’t we just do it in the courtyard? I have a show tomorrow, and -”

“John,” Jane grit out. “We already know you’re not taking this seriously. There’s no need to continue.” 

She flung the autopsy file down onto the table, her brother’s distasteful joke facing up. Predictably, Roxy, Jade, and Rose all starting giggling. John looked entirely too pleased with himself.

“According to this, Mother’s will said that under no circumstances should her body be cut into after death,” Jane said. _That_ at least focused her siblings back up. “And it was not. I don’t think we can trust the opinion of the coroner without a full autopsy, but - ”

“She’s already ash, isn’t she?” Jade interrupted, eyes sharp. “What’s your point?”

“My _point_ is that Mother’s trident was missing and there was no real autopsy. Practically anything could have happened to her!” Jane burst out. “The trident is something only someone close to her would have been able to locate. She never brought it out of the house. This was personal.”

The room fell utterly silent.

“Oh my god,” Rose said, “you think one of us killed her.” She sounded oddly delighted, one of side of her mouth curling up.

“What? No she doesn’t,” Jake countered with an awkward laugh. Nobody moved. He turned to Jane, green eyes wide. “Wait, you don’t, right?”

She felt heat rise into her cheeks. Her mouth was open, but she couldn’t seem to make her throat work.

“I didn’t come back for this,” Jade spat, shoving herself off the couch. She tore out of the room, and Jane heard her thump up the stairs. John followed her, abandoning his glass of brandy with a cutting glare at Jane.

“This has been lovely,” Rose said lightly, standing and smoothing her skirt. Roxy tumbled off the couch, and the two exited one after another.

That left only Jake, staring at Jane with hurt scrawled all the way across his handsome face.

“Jake, wait,” she managed desperately, but he was already out the door.

Jane sank back onto her chair. Her head was throbbing.

“Fuck.”


	3. i think we're alone now

Somehow, Rose found herself in Dave’s room. She’d gone up the stairs without thinking, half-meaning to locate Jade and welcome her to the fold of sapphic womanhood, but then she realized that John had already followed their sister. Most likely, he wouldn’t have taken kindly to Rose intruding on their feelings jam. 

John hadn’t taken kindly to anything Rose had done since she published the book.

Thus, Rose was sitting on the edge of Dave’s bed, palms resting flat against the red quilt. It was obvious that her father was still dusting the room daily; the tops of Dave’s dead thing jars were as shiny as ever. She carefully avoided making eye contact with a particularly malevolent-looking frog floating in the jar on his bedside table. It couldn’t possibly have been good for Dave to sleep with a jar of formaldehyde next to his head, but that was pretty much the mootest of moot points now. The point could not get any mooter if it was pickled in moot juice for forty years.

Hmm. That metaphor had kind of gotten away from her.

Rose scooted back across the bed until her spine was braced against the wall. Her head was spinning pleasantly from the wine, which Roxy had poured very generously. Somehow, her wandering eyes focused on a crumpled Crocker Academy comic book poking out from under a neat stack of cassette tapes. 

_You ain’t special, gill, now shut the fuck up._

Her hands fisted in Dave’s quilt as the memory of watching her siblings’ first mission sprang unbidden into her mind. A few minutes after Constance had told her in no uncertain terms why she wasn’t allowed to go save the bank with the others, she’d been forced to watch the press conference though the limo’s tinted windows. 

She had been able to see all her siblings perfectly, standing on the steps of the bank behind Constance. Jane, trying to look serious and fighting back the flickers of a grin. John and Jake, beaming. Roxy, offering princess waves to the cameras with her tall frame draped over Dave, who was managing a hesitant half-smile. Jade, laughing as she poked a solemn, blood-flecked Dirk in his side.

Dave had told her all the gritty details after the fact, sitting on this very bed. About Jake prancing up to some robber and hoping him into shooting another, about Jane and John plunging into the bank through the skylight. About Roxy taunting the ringleader, allowing Dave to warp in behind him and shove a sword through his stomach. About Dirk’s shadow splitting in four behind the frosted glass leading into the vault, about the screams from inside.

Oddly enough, Dave hadn’t sounded happy about any of it. Rose, twelve years old and so jealous she could scream, had wanted to scoff at the way his voice shook at the parts concerning blood. She’d thought back then he just didn’t know how lucky he was. 

Rose forced her clenched fingers to relax. Even after she had released it, the quilt remained twisted. She tried in vain to smooth it out before giving up with a low sigh.

She knew she should be grateful that she hadn’t been forced to become a murderer before she hit puberty. Instead, she had to suppress renewed fury at her mother. It was just like Constance to die first so Rose had no way to get back at her. 

Bitch.

Rose flopped sideways on the bed, head landing on Dave’s pillow. The watery spring light filtering in through the curtains combined with the wine was making her unbearably drowsy. A nap suddenly sounded like an awfully good idea.

The frog shimmied in its jar as her movement shook the bedside table slightly. It looked oddly iridescent in the sunlight, and as Rose’s lids fluttered shut, she could have sworn it had galaxies spinning in its cold, dead eyes.

\- 

It wasn’t hard for John to figure out where Jade was headed. The two of them had always gravitated towards the highest point in the house.

The attic was one of the few rooms that didn’t have heavy black curtains to draw across the windows, meaning that Constance and Psii were unlikely to come bother them if they retreated up the narrow staircase in the afternoons following difficult training days. Neither their mother nor their tutor were comfortable in the sunlight that shone in through the wide window. 

John crested the stairs to find Jade already flopped on her back in a patch of golden light, long limbs spread out like she was hoping to photosynthesize. The dust motes above her head were spinning in an unnatural way, fizzing with a sharp green. He watched her frown, and they zipped into the shape of a glowing trident momentarily before scattering with the force of her sigh.

“You’re getting good at detail work,” he offered, and she puffed out an unsurprised laugh, pushing herself up on her elbows to look over at him.

“If that’s what you were standing there trying to compose in your head for a full minute, I’m worried about your stand-up career,” she said with a grin.

John flushed a little. Of course she’d known he was there; Jade wouldn’t be Jade if she couldn’t literally sense the physical presence of things in her vicinity. 

“Nice beard, by the way,” Jade added, sitting the rest of the way up and rolling one braid absentmindedly between her fingers. Her rings glinted in the light.

“Thanks, I grew it myself.” It was a weak joke, or maybe not even one at all, but his sister still giggled as he plopped to the floor next to her. “Nice braids.”

“Nepeta’s brother did them!” Jade held one intricate piece out for him to admire more closely.

John stared at it, perplexed. “Nepeta’s brother? But she’s so… _blonde_.”

Snorting, Jade nudged him with her shoulder. “She’s adopted, silly. Like us.”

“Is that what you bonded over?”

Jade shifted uneasily, and John felt a prickle of discomfort in his stomach. She wouldn’t hesitate unless –

“We met at a book signing,” she said. She didn’t need to say which book.

The dust cover on a chair started flapping, and John had to painfully press his fingers into the floorboards to get the breeze to stop rushing around the room. “So she’s some sort of fan,” he managed, throat tight with restraint.

Jade sighed. “It’s not like that. We were both touring the cave systems in Missouri with separate groups and just happened to – ” 

“Accidentally stumble into a widely publicized event celebrating the exposure of every detail of our personal lives starting from birth in a book written by our sister?” John said sharply.

“Nobody even understood it!” Jade protested, drawing away from him.

“They understood the pictures,” John muttered. The dust cover was flapping again. He decided he didn’t care.

He’d just been trying to break into the comedy scene when Rose decided to screw him over. They’d been working together, living under the radar and trying to keep Roxy from dying in some back alley by pooling their minimum wage salaries to put her through rehab for what felt like the thousandth time. Then Rose had announced the book without even warning him.

The clubs had immediately started giving John gigs. It felt like a good thing at first, a chance to work up from opening to headlining. Then he realized what they really wanted him to talk about.

People yelled from the audience. They wanted details on Dave’s disappearance, on Dirk’s death, on their injuries and their punishments. On the worst times of his life. They started recognizing him in the streets, following him around and asking for his opinion on some random gibberish passage from the damn thing itself.

He’d just wanted to leave the suffocating walls of the house behind. He’d thought Rose had wanted that too, until she brought the whole thing closing back in around them. Jade didn’t even blame her for it.

“ _Please_ let the book thing go for now,” Jade said. “We already have Jane being Jane. I don’t want you to fight with Rose about this when we’re all together for the first time in years.”

John turned to face her. Her eyes were huge and imploring behind her glasses. “It’s easy for you,” he mumbled, giving in. The dust cover quieted as the tension slipped out of his back. “People don’t recognize you in the streets.”

“Yeah, figuring out I was trans at the age of twenty-one made things really easy for me, John,” Jade said, sarcasm lacing her tone. “I would definitely recommend intensive HRT for all your person-evasion needs.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” John said petulantly.

Jade sent an elbow flying merrily in his ribs as her serious face cracked into a grin. “I’m teasing. Lighten up. Ding dong, the witch is dead!” She leaned back into the sunlight again, blinking. “So where do you think Mom hid the trident?”

“What?” John asked, startled. 

“It’s obviously some sort of final test,” Jade said practically.

“Oh. It’s…somewhere crazy dangerous, probably,” he replied, voice a little weak.

Jade hummed her assent. “She was the worst,” she said with finality and returned to twisting the dust motes into little pictures.

“Yeah.”

John watched Jade compose the silhouette of a guitar and felt a smile slide across his face. He’d missed her.

-

Roxy woke up splayed across the kitchen table, which was kind of embarrassing but not a new experience.

“Good morning,” Dirk said flatly.

“Aw shit,” she said, squinting at him. Her temples were throbbing. He was sitting on the stove, face impassive behind his glasses. “Did I black out?”

“Yep.” Dirk slid off the stovetop, incorporeal feet making no noise as he hit the ground.

Roxy frowned through her headache. Normally he would have followed that up with some extended ramble comparing her to someone on Real Housewives of New York, which Vriska always had on at the bar. She and Dirk had inevitably become mega-fans over the years. “What’d I do after th’ meeting?” she asked. The last thing she remembered was poor Jane’s haphazard accusation of matricide.

Dirk shrugged. “You stumbled around the halls for a bit and ended up in here. Nothing different from your usual shit, Rox.” He was avoiding her eyes. “Oh, and you took Mom’s urn.”

“Fuck!” she yelped, finally noticing the hideous gold jar sitting on the edge of the sink. “Janey’s gonna kill me.” 

“Maybe,” Dirk said. “She’ll probably kill John and Rose first though, so you might have time to escape.”

Swinging her legs around to rest on a chair, Roxy groaned. “How did we get like this?” Dirk opened his mouth, probably to spout an endless list of actual reasons for their familial dysfunction, but shut it when she huffed, “I _know_ how. Shut up.”

Not chagrinned in the slightest, Dirk flipped her off amiably and settled his back against the refrigerator. Even frozen at seventeen, he was tall enough that his spiked hair cleared the top easily.

Neither of them knew why he had suddenly become Roxy’s nigh-constant companion in the time following his…incident. It wasn’t like she usually went around seeing dead people; her power was _item manifestation_ for god’s sake. Yet there was Dirk, gangly and long-winded as ever, loping around behind her and admonishing every pill she popped. 

Stupid asshole. He was kind of the worst. And the best. The infinite paradox of Dirk, same as it always had been.

She’d never told any of her other siblings. They wouldn’t have believed her.

“I can’t b’lieve I blacked out on four drinks,” Roxy said mournfully, dropping her chin into her hands. “I’m losing my touch.”

“Constance has good shit,” Dirk pointed out dismissively, fingers tapping silently against his thigh. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear he was nervous. 

“Yeah. Kinda the only good thing about her,” Roxy agreed, eyeing the urn. “Hey, d’you think the record player’s still stashed in the pantry?”

Dirk shrugged. “Does it matter? You could just make one.”

She rolled her eyes, scooting off the table to go check. “I’m still too tipsy for that kind of mechanical work. Plus I can’t ever get records quite right w’th all the li’l ridges. They’re feisty bitches.”

The pantry yielded both the record player and a stack of records, all tucked away under a pile of cloth napkins in a manner that reeked of hasty, childish disguise. Roxy figured the last time they’d used it was when Dave was still around. After he vanished, it had seemed like there was less time to have impromptu sibling dance parties in all corners of the house. Dave was the only one who bought records anyway.

Roxy had a faint memory of Rose frantically abducting Dave’s records, player, and camera in the weeks after he left. For some reason, Rose had been afraid that Constance would empty out his room in the dead of night and try to pretend he’d never existed in the first place. Even when Constance put the portrait up, Rose had left the music stuff in the pantry. By that point, all of them had started avoiding Dave’s room altogether. It felt wrong.

Dirk made a faint noise of appreciation as she hauled the thing out and set it on the table. “Any requests?” she chirped.

“Old Town Road,” he deadpanned immediately. She stuck her tongue out at him as he hesitated, considering for real. “What did we leave in there?”

Roxy opened the top and studied the record inside. “Looks like Tiffany.”

The corner of Dirk’s mouth turned up.

Roxy put the needle on.

-

Rose heard music. It was odd, muffled, beating up into her head from somewhere else.

_Children behave…that’s what they say when we’re together._

She was sitting on the floor of her childhood bedroom, a tiny, barren square of a room. A dollhouse with a familiar crest on the front gate rested in front of her folded knees, which were poking out from beneath the hem of her uniform skirt. She reached a tentative finger out to touch a pointed tip on the iron gate, and the music grew slightly louder.

_Running just as fast as we can…holding on to one another’s hands._

The stone walls seemed to shudder for an instant, and a long crack wormed its way down the front of the building. Rose snatched her hand away, suddenly mesmerized by the shining light emanating from the split. A whisper slipped through her mind, a wordless ripple that trickled down her neck until shivering into her spine.

_Trying to get away into the night and then you put your arms around me and we tumble to the ground and then you say…_

The song was ringing in her bones. Breathless, she plunged forward, eyes squeezing shut, and slammed her palm onto the roof of the tiny Academy.

She could _see_. The whole house was laid out before her, a minute, impossible diorama of moving parts. Her feet dangled in darkness, arms peddling the void as she floated in front.

_I think we’re alone now…_

The music was clear as day, and her eyes caught on the record player spinning away on the kitchen table. Behind the table, Roxy was waltzing alone, legs sloppy, arms held up as if to an invisible partner. She was beaming.

A laugh bubbled up in Rose’s throat. They were all dancing.

_The beating of our hearts is the only sound._

Jade and John spun in circles in the attic, John’s feet lifting off the ground despite his obvious struggle to remain earthbound. Jake appeared to be doing the beginning of a strip tease in front of his bedroom mirror. And Jane, somber, furious Jane, was performing some sort of Rockettes-esque kick routine with such reckless abandon that Rose feared for the integrity of her bedroom furniture.

For the first time in years, Rose felt something like happiness bloom in her chest.

That was, of course, when an explosion rocked the world.

Rose’s eyes snapped open, dream draining away like water as the walls of the real Academy shook around her. Something was amiss.


End file.
